


give us a smile (i ain't got nothing to smile about)

by agent37draws



Category: Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, DC give me my dynamic duo back, Dick is Damian's father figure and you can rip that away from my cold dead hands, Gen, Minor Canonical Character(s), this is my love letter to Damian Wayne, who is a CHILD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28135593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent37draws/pseuds/agent37draws
Summary: give us a smile/i ain’t got nothin to smile about -nightmare, halseyorthe rare smiles of Damian Wayne
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Comments: 8
Kudos: 75





	give us a smile (i ain't got nothing to smile about)

**Author's Note:**

> A warning for canon-typical violence, and established character death (they get better tho, it's comics). I didn't mean for this to be angsty, but it can be read as such. 
> 
> I'm also working on art for this, so I'll add it when it's done.

“Nightmare?” He smothers a yawn and pats the covers next to him. “C’mere, lil’ D. Plenty of room.” 

Damian manages a scoff that’s half-hearted, at best. Thankfully, Richard doesn’t call him out on it. “Nightmares are scared of Al Ghuls and Waynes, never the other way around. I just heard _you_ trashing, and am here to tell you to stop.” Damian refuses to meet Richard’s eyes, and refuses to let the next sentence slip out of his mouth with a stutter. “I’ll even allow you to cuddle me, if you want.” 

“Well, how can a guy say no to that?” Richard’s blue eyes smile at him, even as the man’s mouth does not move from its serious ponder, and lifts the comforter for Damian to slide under. “Thank you, Robin.” Damian hears the steady beat of his Batman’s heart, and feels the warmth of another body wrapped around his, and for the first time he can remember, falls asleep easily, quietly, without flashes of metal and acid green haunting his dreams. 

He feels safe, and unconsciously, softly, Damian’s scowl slips off of his face. 

⥈⥈⥈

Oh. Damian’s thoughts move sluggishly, no- they ricochet like pachinko balls, bouncing off the walls of his mind- no that’s his heartbeat, hammering in his ears, that’s the boom boom boom of bombs in the background- no no nono- 

Oh. Sound fades first, then touch, as his numb fingers drop his katana. He can’t smell the smoke of the battlefield, the metallic tang of blood - his blood - the faint cologne that his future self wears. His vision blurs out next even as his eyes remain wide open, unseeing, and he thinks that he doesn’t want to die seeing this red glow, that twisted smile on Heretic’s face. He thinks that he doesn’t want to die. 

He tastes copper- chokes on it. He is three and his teacher had slammed a fist into his stomach, then driven in a hard elbow. He spits out blood, and copper coats his tongue. It is his first day of hand-to-hand combat. He’s five , and Lady Vix is teaching him about poisons and their antidotes. It tastes like copper, going down. The antidote tastes like rot. He’s six, and he’s submerged in the waves of Grandfather’s pits for the first time. He can’t breathe, and the waters fill his nose and his ears and his mouth, and they taste like copper and sugar. He learns how to get used to drowning, and the taste of copper lingering on his teeth. He’s seven and nine and then- he is ten, and he meets Richard. 

It tastes like hot cocoa when Damian’s heart stops. 

⥈⥈⥈

“ _You’re_ alive?”

“You’re _alive_?” 

“I missed you.” 

“I know, kiddo. Me too. Me too.” Richard smiles and it’s contagious, after being apart for so long, and well- Damian had missed this. Missed his Batman, his partner- the man who had taught him about love and hot cocoa and flying, so he smiles back. It’s a small thing, but Richard’s eyes soften, and the new lines in his forehead smooth out. 

“Aren’t you going to tell me I’m an ass for hiding, for doing it all?” He asks, pensively. Richard doesn’t really need an answer, not from _him_ , but Damian indulges him anyways. 

He takes off his mask, and blinks to clear the dust from his eyes, and holds his brother’s ~~father's~~ face in his hands. 

“I know who it was for.” Damian sees the joy in his partner’s smile, and well, maybe he’s feeling a tad nostalgic. “No matter what anyone thinks,” he mutters, and it’s worth the embarrassment he feels at being caught so trusting, with his guard down, and he still needs to shove away his mother’s voice berating him from showing such weakness- but it’s worth it when Richard kisses his forehead, and whispers back. 

“We were the best, weren’t we?” 

⥈⥈⥈

_I’m so sorry for your loss,_ they all say. _He was a great hero, one of the best. Such a shame, what happened._

Superman says _I am so sorry Damian_ , but his eyes say _I should have been there. I could have stopped that bullet, seen it coming from five hundred miles away_. Superman says that Jon has been asking about you, and that he understands what Damian is going through right now but to please return his calls and his texts, he’s really worried about you. 

We all are, he says, then blinks as if surprised at the presence of the tear trickling down his face. Damian feels a faint flutter of satisfaction as he watches it slide from the alien’s cheek, and bounce off the corner of that bright ridiculous S on his chest. 

Wonder Woman doesn’t say anything, but she watches him like he is one moment away from breaking. Damian does not tell her that he’s sure he doesn’t have that capacity, anymore. Besides, the way her gaze shifts from him to the others, scattered around the sunny sitting room, is amusing, like she’s surrounded by a pack of rabid wolves intent on stripping the meat from her flesh. She is too experienced a warrior to clutch at her lasso with whitened knuckles, but her hand is never more than a foot away from the weapons on her hips. 

The Titans do not make an appearance. Apparently West and Harper are dead, and the rest are trapped in an alternate dimension. Damian notes their absence the way he observes the sunny skies, or the gentle birdsong. Apathetically, and as an afterthought. 

The Teen Titans are also absent, but Todd’s and Drake’s various team members huddle in their respective groups, blanketed by a thick cloud of awkward silence. He hadn’t told his team. What was the point of telling the superheroes he led about a funeral?

What was the point of a funeral if the mourned was still alive? 

He continues his slow sweep of the premises, noting the way Todd’s hands fist inside the pockets of his leather jacket, and the air of rage hovering around the air like a tangible barrier, keeping his Outlaws at a distance. The red-headed Amazon makes as if to approach, and Damian feels a flicker of approval when Todd lifts his eyes and stops her in her tracks. Todd always did have a decent glare, when he really pulled out all the stops. Or maybe it wasn’t the glare, but the way his eyes glowed a faint, sickly green that had halted her. Now there was a rabid wolf on the verge of _something_ , and Damian almost wants to tug on Wonder Woman’s arm and tell her. 

Drake is wrapped up in the arms of his clone, surrounded by his team, with the clone clutching at him like he wants to unzip Drake’s skin and slide inside. Damian feels vaguely sick, and moves on. He doesn’t care enough about Drake to notice the bags underneath the other’s eyes, or the way he behaves more like a wooden puppet than a boy, not returning the clone’s embrace. Drake doesn’t have Lazarus eyes to keep his interest. 

He is tired of this useless charade, of the empty banalities the other heroes murmur in tones meant to smooth a startled cat, and so he turns to head inside the manor. 

Todd snarls out a _Where are you going, brat?_ but Damian has long perfected the skill of ignoring the second robin, and tunes him out easily. Dying doesn’t make you special, he wants to throw out- we’ve _all_ died - but that would require energy and led to a whole argument and maybe a fight that he just doesn’t have the capacity to care about at this moment. 

He climbs the stairs and goes to Richard’s room, lays on his unmade bed, burrows beneath soft worn sheets that smell like antiseptic and blood, no matter what kind of laundry detergent Pennyworth tries. All their sheets smell like that. A thin layer of dust had covered Richard’s room, light streaming in from the open window. Pennyworth had been preoccupied, lately. Damian doesn’t care. The dust motes give this room a surreal quality, as the sun floods it with golden light, and illuminates the picture frame on Richard’s nightstand. 

Damian smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually the first writing thing I've finished, and I did it almost entirely fueled by my baseless theory that Dick and Damian will team up as Deathstroke and Red X in Future State 
> 
> references to comics - Batman Incorporated, Grayson, Rebirth Nightwing/Rebirth Detective Comics 
> 
> please comment it fuels my need for vindication lol


End file.
